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Summer 2007
Caroline Albert
Donna Dixon
Shara Faskowitz
Adrian Heathcote
Stephen Mead
Michelle Morgan
Spring 2007
Featured Artist:Jennifer Balkan
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Michael Keshigian
LANDLORD
The tenants left him a bar of soap,
two rolls of toilet paper,
shredded paper towels,
and a ripped sponge mop with bucket.
He tried to rub the white wall clean,
discovered it impossible,
realized they tried as well.
He decided to paint it over.
Hair choked the bathroom sink,
long hairs, male and female,
they both wore ponytails,
short of acid, nothing else would work.
The hardwood floor
wore rubber scuffs and high heel turns,
no doubt they danced and laughed,
but only broom swept it clean.
He began to know who they were,
seldom did he speak to them,
the check always arrived in the mail.
They breezed through, a great wind,
leaving behind a trail of dirt,
a thank you of sorts,
the residual continuity of broken leases
and painstaking interviews.
He seized their soap,
a green veined, marbled bar,
curved like a woman,
took a bath
after he cleaned the tub,
and dried with no towel,
in the air
with the walls and floors.
HEALING
The morning sky imagined
a glow of pink and purple
before the sun arrived,
before the horizon
imagined itself a blond,
like the smiling nurse
who helped me out to the car,
wearing colorful clips in her hair,
clips which stole the sunlight's gleam.
On the sidewalk,
I stared at the asphalt,
it held a puddle of rainwater,
I imagined it a cocktail.
Over the sunlight,
a dense cloud dissipated,
creating a halo
around the red brick of the building
I earlier imagined
would be my last to enter.
I had never noticed sunlight ripple
in a street puddle before.
The ride home was uncomfortable
yet joyous.
The road imagined a parade,
cars lined up dutifully,
and the morning, so conscious of itself,
imagined a celebration of light
forever beaming, forever replete.
When you touched my hand,
it was as if
you imagined I needed your touch,
as if I imagined your touch
exactly at that time
to realize the morning.
MICHAEL KESHIGIAN is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Translucent View (Four-Sep Publications, 2000), Dwindling Knight (BoneWorld Publishing, 2000 ), and Silent Poems (Four-Sep Publications, 2004). His next chapbook, Warm Summer Memories, will be published in the summer of 2007 by Maverick Duck Press. His poetry has been widely published in numerous national and international journals, anthologies, and a variety of periodicals as well as many online publications, including ByLine Magazine, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Oyez Review, The Sierra Nevada College Review, Bellowing Ark, and Ibbetson Street Press. He has been a featured writer for The Aurorean, Poetree Magazine, Pegasus Review, The Illogical Muse, and Reader's Choice in the Fairfield Review. He is a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee.
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"O Fortuna"
by Jennifer Balkan
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